The present invention relates to digital image processing, and in particular, to selecting and arranging multiple digital images from a group of thumbnail images and printing such selected images.
To become mass market products, computer-based digital photography systems must offer consumers the ability to easily organize and print digital images. In particular, it should be simple to choose from all of the images taken by a camera, or stored on a disc, a set of a dozen or more images to be printed all at once. Unfortunately, existing prior art systems require the user to choose a first image, go through a process to print it, then choose a second image and repeat the same process a second time for this second image and again for all of the images to be printed.
It may also be desirable for a user to choose a set of images to be printed on a single page with all selected images being equally sized and properly positioned. For example, the user may wish to print groups of four different images on an 8xe2x80x3xc3x9710xe2x80x3 home printer. Microsoft PictureIt(trademark) version 1.0 includes an image input screen (xe2x80x9cget itxe2x80x9d screen) that provides multiple reduced resolution, or xe2x80x9cthumbnailxe2x80x9d, images, but the thumbnail images must be dragged and dropped one at a time from the preview image type screen to a filmstrip. Next, the user must exit the image input mode and switch to a print layout mode within a xe2x80x9cshare itxe2x80x9d screen. In this mode, the user must drag and drop the first image from the filmstrip into the print layout screen. The user must then manually resize, rotate (if required), and position the first image, for example, in the upper left of the screen. Next, the user selects the second image and manually attempts to properly size and position this image, for example, in the upper right of the screen. Finally, after all four images have been manually resized and positioned, the composite image is ready to print. Thus, creating a page with four equally sized and properly positioned images requires the user to perform many manual operations.
Other prior art software programs also permit the user to view a two-dimensional array of thumbnail images (sometimes called a xe2x80x9ccontact sheetxe2x80x9d or a xe2x80x9cgalleryxe2x80x9d) to facilitate selection. However, these galleries are used only to select which images may be xe2x80x9copenedxe2x80x9d by the program for further manual, picture by picture editing. For example, LivePiX(trademark) version 1.1 has such a gallery, but it only allows the user to select one image, which is then opened. After the image is opened, it may be manually sized, copied, and pasted into a collage image in a manner similar to PictureIt. MGI Photosuite(trademark) Special Edition includes a xe2x80x9cPhoto Albumxe2x80x9d with a gallery type feature. The order of the thumbnail images may be rearranged to later allow a xe2x80x9cslideshowxe2x80x9d of images to be viewed, one after another in the desired order. But the user cannot select multiple images from the gallery to print or to move to another gallery.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,607,949 discloses a method of printing photographic images in which a plurality of photographs taken on a photo negative film and explanatory captions of the photographs are printed together on a sheet of photographic paper. U.S. Pat. No. 5,109,281 discloses a video printer adapted for printing multiple images on a single sheet. U.S. Pat. No. 5,274,418 discloses an image processing system which reproduces a plurality of photographs on a single sheet of photographic paper in an album-like format. Although the methods described in the aforementioned patents include photographically printing multiple images per page, a user cannot select multiple images on a computer and automatically print the selected images.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method which enables multiple images to be easily printed on a hardcopy printer.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method which enables multiple different images to be properly sized and positioned to be printed on a single page.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method which enables a user to easily select one or more images from a preview screen gallery of thumbnail images and automatically print the selected images with several different images properly sized and positioned on each page.
These objects are achieved in a method for selecting and arranging digital images to be printed from a group of thumbnail images, comprising the steps of:
(a) displaying the group of thumbnail images;
(b) selecting, from the group of thumbnail images, the number of images to be printed per page and the images which are to be printed on each page;
(c) automatically arranging the selected images for each page to be printed; and
(d) printing the arranged images.
An advantage of the present invention is to enable a user to select a set of images from a group of thumbnail images to be printed, including the number of images to be printed per page, and to automatically print the selected images.
Another advantage of the present invention is to enable the selected images to be properly sized and positioned on each page for printing without user intervention.